By John F. Copper

Top Two Targets of Western Liberal Media Bias: Trump and China

Proof
can be heard or seen almost daily of Western liberal media bias against US President
Donald J Trump and the People’s Republic of China. The two are the foremost
targets of the liberal media’s unfairness and ill will like no others. They are
regarded as foes to discredit, embarrass, undermine, and more.

This
generates questions about how to view politics in the two countries, the
critically important US-China relationship, and stability in global affairs.
There is a lot at stake. There are clearly downsides to this situation.

The
details are instructive.

President
Donald J Trump is the primary bull’s eye of liberal media’s attacks. When did
this begin? Why? How is it manifested?

This
started when Donald Trump entered the race for president. The US mainstream
media at first tried to ignore him. Then they came to fear and loathe him as he
performed well during the campaign. This increased exponentially when he won
the Republican Party’s nomination in spite of media disapproval and to a
considerable degree because of it.

Donald
Trump assailed leftist views; though he was not a conventional or establishment
conservative — this was worse, since the media knew how to deal with Washington’s
conservative insiders. Anyway, the liberal media heavily favored liberal Hillary
Clinton.

Trump
used social media, especially his Twitter account, to make newscasts that the
liberal media assumed was its domain. Even more galling, as he was a presidential
candidate, the liberal media had to cover his activities and discuss his agenda,
thus giving him millions of dollars worth of free publicity.

Also
troubling to the liberal media, Trump was part of a broader phenomenon present
in many Western democracies — citizens repudiating big government bureaucracies
(labeled insiders or the political class) that supported special interests,
political correctness, and identity politics, thus giving rise to
anti-establishment populism.

Donald
Trump was also candid and blunt, which appealed heartedly to voters that
perceived that Washington politicians were not transparent, were out-of-touch
establishment figures, were corrupt, and did not have the majority of Americans
at heart.

So
the liberal media portrayed Donald Trump as being crude, lacking knowledge
about politics, anti-freedom of the press, isolationist, protectionist, racist,
misogynist, fascist, a warmonger, and almost everything negative it could think
of.

This
only got worse after Donald Trump was elected president.

Many
of the things the liberal media said and wrote about Trump were
mischaracterizations or untruths (or lies). This was considered okay because
Donald Trump was their sworn enemy.

The
media called the Trump administration secretive, even though it had already
reported that former President Barack Obama was one of the most opaque
politicians to sit in the Oval Office. Reporters had also noted that the Obama
administration had set a record in withholding Freedom of Information requests and
had used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers who leaked to the press more
than all the previous administrations combined.

The
liberal media made up news about President Trump. Early on TheNew York Times carried
a story about Trump badly treating his girlfriends and interviewed one of them.
She, Rowanne Brewer Lane, subsequently told Fox
and Friends that the Times had misrepresented
her, and that Trump was kind and thoughtful and was a gentleman.

A
host of media outlets (Kellyanne Conway said more than a thousand) carried a news
piece about Trump having removed the bust of Martin Luther King from the Oval
Office. The reporter that first wrote about this (which others copied without
fact checking) admitted he had made a mistake. However, few in the media
reported his retraction or that President Obama had removed the bust of Winston
Churchill.

The
media wrote that President Trump was a protectionist, even though US trade was
already out of balance to the degree that it was unsustainable and endangered
stable global commerce, and that Trump had proceeded to fix it.

The
liberal media labeled Trump isolationist based on his “make American great
again” slogan, notwithstanding the fact that his rebuilding the US military
suggested just the opposite, or that he was refurbishing American alliances and
building close personal relations with a host of important world leaders.

Liberals
were obsessed to see President Trump fail. During his trip to Asia, almost in
unison they propagated the view of his poor handling of foreign policy. However,
Asian newspapers and media outlets said exactly the opposite. Many US news organizations
reported that China’s leader President Xi Jinping had bamboozled President Trump,
even though when in China Trump negotiated the largest economic deal ever for
US companies.

The
Western media said Trump had surrendered leadership of the world to China; the
truth was America’s decline was already very palpable — the result of Middle
East wars under Bush II and Obama, plus Obama leading from behind and
dramatically cutting US defense spending. Also, never mind that this was a
contradiction as the same media fancied downplaying China’s expanding global
role.

This
same US media supported an investigation of the Trump campaign over contacts
with Russia that supposedly indicated the latter had influenced the results of
the election — even though Russia had intruded into American politics for one
hundred years, that other nations had certainly influenced US elections and
America had tilted elections in other countries for years. Plus, the evidence
indicated the Clintons and the Democratic Party had very questionable ties with
Moscow.

The
liberal Western media ignored President Trump’s accomplishments, such as
putting economic growth back on track after eight years of low growth (no GDP
rise of three percent during any year), a string of stock market records, the
lowest US unemployment in 17 years, a million new jobs created in six months
(pushing black and Hispanic unemployment to the lowest level ever recorded), the
highest consumer confidence ratings for some time, and widespread new positive
feelings about America.

Patently
the mainstream media also underreported vital favorable news about President
Trump. Considering its salience, the defeat of ISIS under Trump was the most
slighted event of 2017. Likewise, little attention was given to Trump’s tax
bill and its positive impact on the US and foreign stock markets and the global
economy. Also, the anti-government protests in Iran, whose leadership President
Trump had condemned, got little attention.

The
lack of fairness toward President Trump mirrored the fact that around 90
percent of liberal media personnel were pro-Democratic Party and a
disproportionate number had supported and/or had given money to Hillary Clinton’s
campaign. Never was the Western media so slanted.

President
Trump and President Xi are aware of the fact the liberal Western media hate
them both and would like to see them in conflict. They thus are making
concerted efforts to avoid this.

Its
blatant bias also paralleled, and caused, a decline in the public’s perception
of the liberal media’s professionalism and its widespread loss of public
confidence. In fact, Americans’ trust in the media dropped below most other
institutions and professions.

China
has been and is the second mark of the liberal Western media. Why is that?

It
starts with the left’s view that China is a traditional and conservative
country where liberal ideas espoused by the mainstream media in the US, and
Europe are not taking hold and won’t. China, it is charged, will not “become
like us.” China’s history and culture are too strong for that, not to mention
that Chinese see their country as a past and even current victim of liberal
Western countries.

More
importantly, the Western mainstream media dreads China’s rise, seeing it as a
threat to the liberal world order. In China, Western liberal democracy is not
an ideology to admire or follow. Rather China is influenced by its history of
defining world politics wherein economic influence trumps military power.
Already the two financial centers of gravity (the Atlantic and Pacific bloc
countries) have been fused into a China-centered one behind Beijing’s Belt and
Road Initiative and its lead in manufacturing, trade, and foreign currency giving
it new global influence.

A
secondary impact and embarrassment of China’s global economic dominance is its
overtaking Western countries in helping developing countries prosper. China has
also been doing more to alleviate global poverty than any other country.
Western countries cannot afford to help much any more; developing countries
have said this publicly to the West’s embarrassment. Africa is the second
fastest growing region of the world for the first time ever because of China’s
foreign aid and investment.

China
is likewise the main driver of planetary growth. According to the World
Economic Union, China will account for 35.2 percent of the world’s real GDP
growth from 2017 to 2019. The US will provide half of that — 17.9 percent. The
European Union less than one-quarter of China — 7.9 percent. Japan will account
for 1.5 percent and Russia 1.0 percent.

So,
the Western liberal media attacks China citing a host of its foibles and sins.

It
widely and regularly condemns China’s “authoritarian dictatorship.” Never mind
that China’s polity historically was a system that operated for the people not
of the people or by the people and that it has recently done a yeoman’s job of
providing for its people — removing 650 to 700 million of them from poverty in the
last three-plus decades. The government enjoys public popularity for this.

Forget
also the fact that China, which was not historically a country of law, has made
tremendous progress in that direction. China has also made big strides in
citizen participation in politics. According to Pew Foundation polls, its
government and leaders have greater citizen support by a wide margin than do
the governments in the United States, Europe, or Japan. By the way, Chinese
citizens comment on politics online more than their counterparts in Western
countries.

The
Western liberal media reports incessantly on the Chinese government’s alleged
oppressive control of its people, mentioning almost daily its heavy regulation
of the Internet and official overreach in controlling crime. They fail to
mention, often at least, American and European citizens’ growing concern over
the deep state at home or that there is widespread blowback against big
government intrusiveness in the latter countries.

The
liberal Western media frequently cites China for its repression of the
population in Tibet. Seldom mentioned is the fact that China eradicated Tibet’s
slave culture (or the fact the Dalai Lama was educated by Nazis) or that
protest in Tibet is mostly against local capitalists and not the Chinese
government. Because of its misreporting on the Tibet situation and other issues,
anticnn.com a few years ago became the most popular website for the youth in
China.

China
is also castigated in the Western media for its terrible air pollution.
Westerners have the impression that Chinese cities are the worst in the world
in terms of air quality, when the most polluted cities are in the Middle East,
India, and Africa. Beijing is far down the list at number 57 or 153 in the latest
rankings. Considering there are various kinds of air pollution, Los Angeles
ranks worse than most of China’s metropolitan cities.

The
liberal media excoriates China for human rights abuses. Ignored is the fact
that China’s record has improved immeasurably since the passing of Mao and his
ultra-leftist, extreme egalitarian regime. Moreover, in terms of race
relations, crimes against women, homelessness, the treatment of children and
the elderly, public safety and using a number of other measures, China does
better than the United States.

The
Western media blasts China for cheating in its trade relations with other
countries even though most countries in the world practice protectionism of
some sort. China is singled out because it is bigger economically but also for
its not being seen as politically correct. Forgotten is the fact that China’s trade
surpluses increased big-time after it joined the World Trade Organization and
that cases filed against China have not proven China to be a big violator. An
inconvenient truth is that China is such a big competitor in trade mainly
because of its work ethic, lower taxes and regulations, and fewer lawyers.

The
liberal Western media also assails President Xi for having abolished collective
leadership in favor of one-man dictatorial rule, ignoring the fact that a
meritocracy put him in power while ruthlessness and purges did not. Nor do they
mention that more central authority is needed to deal with corruption, lax
military discipline, and more hostile enemies on the world stage that abhor
China’s rise. The liberal Western media also gives little attention to
President Xi’s concept of “community of common destiny” as the basis for
China’s foreign relations though it is praised in non-Western countries.

Meanwhile,
Hollywood and academe in the US, which are in league with the liberal media in
their treatment of the Chinese, support racial discrimination in admission to
America’s top universities (plus liberal professors deliberately give Chinese
and other Asian lower grades in their classes than other minorities) while the
Chinese are by design almost excluded from American movies and television.

In
conclusion, it can hardly be said that the Western liberal media bias toward
President Trump and toward China is a good thing.

One
of the main effects of anti-Trump prejudice is that professional journalism in
Western countries, which has long afforded positive and needed connections
between the government and its citizens, has been sacrificed. Lost also is its
role as the protector of fairness and justice. This is unfortunate.

This
is also wrong. As Pope Francis recently stated: “Fake news is a sin.”

For
China, both its citizens and its leaders, Western media bias is seen as part of
an effort to contain China, to keep China down, and to prevent it from playing
a bigger role in international affairs — one that is in keeping with its economic
and other advances. Chinese see it as the revival of imperialism, racism and
worse.

Many
also view Western liberal media bias as likely to bring the US and China into
conflict. In fact, it has been said that the liberal Western media is so
obsessed with destroying President Trump and obstructing China’s continuing
rise that its members think a war between the US and China might be a good
thing. It would be “killing two birds with one stone.”

On
the other hand, this situation may be one of a “two-edged sword.” There is also
a positive side to the situation.

In
his recently published book Destined for
War, Graham Allison argues that, learning from the history of the Peloponnesian
wars in ancient Greece and most of the major wars since then, the condition of
a dominant status quo power and a rising challenging power is the recipe that
explains major wars that followed. Not only that, but the relationship between
the US (the status quo power) and China (the rising power, alas the very fast
rising power) now suggests a US-China war will inevitably result and it will engulf
the entire planet.

President
Trump and President Xi seem acutely aware of this situation and seek to avoid a
conflict. They are also aware of the fact the liberal Western media hate them
both and would like to see them in conflict. They thus are making concerted efforts
to avoid this.

There
is cause for optimism. US-China relations have moved from being worse during the
later years of the Obama presidency than at any time since President Nixon
engineered a rapprochement between the two countries to the two leaders being
cordial and communicating effectively.

Could
it be that the intolerance and the hatred espoused by the liberal Western media
toward Donald Trump and China might turn out to be a good thing? That would be
a great irony.

About The Author

John F. Copper is the Stanley J. Buckman Professor of International Studies (emeritus) at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of more than thirty books on China, Taiwan and US Asia policy.